La Botte Ristorante
620 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
For Mother’s Day, Tiff and I selected La Botte as our dinner destination. My mother was probably not as excited about the food, but Tiff and I expected that the meal would be quite good considering all the press about its one Michelin star. And, considering the fact that only a handful of Southern California restaurants received stars at all, for one reason or another, that single star shone quite tantalizingly to these four would-be patrons. As usual, I managed to avoid valet parking and found street parking around the corner. The restaurant was not particularly crowded and I realized that reservations were probably not necessary for Sunday supper.
We had arrived early, but were promptly seated and asked if we wanted flat or sparkling water. I reflexively said flat and almost instantaneously, two bottles of imported flat water from Italy were opened at our table. Ignoring the fact that one bottle had sufficed to fill our four glasses, our server opened up a second bottle without consulting us. One might argue diligent service, but I call it inappropriate presumption.
We wanted to try a variety of plates and my folks were utterly lost in all the Italian, so I took the liberty of ordering for everyone, even Tiffany. However, she did happen to choose her main course. My parents started with the Watercress salad with avocado, hearts of palm, roasted pine nuts, shaved parmesan; Tiff had the grilled polenta, gorgonzola cheese, portobello mushroom cap and roasted garlic; and I had the mixed green salad with red beet, diced potatoes, and haricots. Tiff’s appetizer was quite good, but the salads were quite unremarkable.
Next, came our entres. My father had the homemade tagliatelle with traditional Bolognese sauce. My mother ate the fish of the day — an arctic char in some sort of port sauce. Arctic char is essentially a salmon. It is a member of the Salmonidae family, looks like a salmon, and tastes like a salmon, though some would argue that its flavor is best characterized as between that of salmon and trout. Tiff had homemade black linguine served with Dungeness crab meat and roasted garlic. As for myself, I chose slow cooked Berkshire pork shoulder with caponata and white polenta.
Don’t the descriptions sound delectable? Certainly, they sound even better in Italian. Our wait staff was either indigenous Italians recently uprooted to Santa Monica or they were out of work actors who had diligently worked to mimic authentic sing-songy Italian accents. Unfortunately, with the presentation of our entres, the dinner took a terrible course. Tiff’s pasta tasted more of salt than crab. Three other tasters agreed. My mother’s char could simply have been a piece of salmon doused in some common brown sauce. My slow cooked pork shoulder, to the chef’s credit, was appropriately tender. Unfortunately, the kitchen seemed to have neglected any attempt to flavor it. The meager Italian equivalent of BBQ sauce complementing the pork was unable to imbue any life into the tender strands of tasteless protein. My father’s pasta was probably the best dish of the evening. But, I suppose the restaurant would be particularly remiss if its staff can’t concoct a decent Bolognese and some fresh pasta al dente.
Tiff and I kept staring back at each other and my family took turns sampling each other’s meals again and again, hoping against all hope that our growing disappointment would be dispelled by the next person’s dish. Alas, this was not the case. We sat utterly bewildered as our plates were taken away, and when asked whether we wanted dessert, I immediately declined on our behalf. I could not stand to spend another penny in the restaurant for another morsel of mediocre food. We absconded as soon as possible and headed to Red Mango in an attempt to improve the evening’s gustatory fiasco.
In a word, the experience was underwhelming. Was this really the restaurant that received such acclaim? If four people have to search for savory bite in such a place, there are only two possibilities. 1) The cuisine is so inscrutably subtle and complex that our palates cannot appreciate the food. 2) The food sucked. In either case, there is no reason to visit the restaurant again.
